Chapter 3663 — Deliberate Sabotage

New to this place and preferring to play it safe, Wei Zhao had no intention of wasting true qi on this black ape. He turned at once, meaning to shake it off with his Butterfly Microstep; even if this was the creature's home ground, Wei Zhao remained absolutely confident in his speed.

Yet to his surprise, for all his forbearance, the black ape kept doggedly on his heels, looking very much like it would never give up until one of them was dead. That left Wei Zhao somewhat puzzled—what exactly had he done to provoke the thing? Surely he hadn't accidentally blundered into its den?

In the blink of an eye, man and ape had already burst several hundred zhang through the dense canopy, and only then did the black ape finally slow down, as though it meant to give up.

Wei Zhao breathed an inward sigh of relief. This bore out his earlier guess—it seemed he really had strayed unwittingly into the other's territory. For jungle spirit beasts with fiercely territorial instincts, an outsider like Wei Zhao breaking into their lair was indeed cause for a fight to the death.

Yet just as the black ape seemed about to give up, a massive dark shape abruptly materialized above its head without the slightest warning. Before the ape could react, a bloody maw swallowed it whole, then went whistling back into the dense canopy, too fast for anyone to make out its true form.

Hisss! Having witnessed the entire scene from beginning to end, Wei Zhao could not help drawing a sharp breath. Before that behemoth set its eyes on him, he hurriedly fled the spot.

Only after cautiously putting nearly a hundred zhang between himself and the place did Wei Zhao finally slow down. His heart still racing, the corners of his mouth nonetheless curved upward of their own accord: this back mountain had indeed given him a proper welcome, a real show of force to put him in his place.

He was, after all, a skilled hand at the early Foundation Establishment stage. Terrifying as that spectacle had been, enough to make one's scalp crawl, Wei Zhao had still managed to take in plenty of information in his haste.

That colossal thing was a great mottled python. The stretch of serpent body it revealed in that instant was easily as thick as a water barrel, and though it kept its head hidden and its tail concealed, impossible to see in full, Wei Zhao could infer that it was at least ten zhang long—over thirty meters, in other words—which made it an out-and-out behemoth.

More to the point, the fact that this mottled python could swallow a mid-Heaven stage black ape in a single gulp meant its strength had to be at least at the peak of the Heaven stage, and quite possibly it was a powerful spirit beast at the Foundation Establishment stage.

In this deep mountain forest, facing such a ferocious, hideous Foundation Establishment spirit beast, Wei Zhao had not the slightest confidence of escaping unscathed; it was not at all impossible that one slip would cost him his life here. Thank goodness the python's prey had been that black ape—had it been him instead, he truly might not have dodged that strike just now.

Recalling then the warning his long-suffering senior brother had given him before departure, Wei Zhao instantly felt the man had been absolutely right: his enemies were not only the other newcomers—the back mountain itself was the most dangerous source of all.

From the moment he had stepped off the flying spirit beast until now, only a few short minutes had passed, and already he had encountered two powerful spirit beasts in succession, one of which might even be at the Foundation Establishment stage. Such a thing was simply unimaginable out in the wider world.

And to think this was only the outer fringe of the back mountain! What would the inner fringe, or the more central reaches, look like? Never mind those Heaven-stage-peak newcomers—Wei Zhao felt that even a skilled hand like himself, at the early Foundation Establishment stage, absolutely could not survive a single day here.

What Wei Zhao did not know was that although quite a few powerful and vicious Foundation Establishment spirit beasts prowled the outer fringe, they were hardly so numerous that one could stumble over them with a casual step. Had such python-caliber creatures been everywhere, the other newcomers, with only Heaven-stage-peak strength, could never have survived, let alone gathered herbs.

The reason he had run into vicious things one after another the moment he arrived was not simply bad luck. Someone behind the scenes had deliberately put in a word, precisely so that he would be dropped into the most dangerous stretch of the outer fringe and done to death in some spirit beast's jaws.

To arrange that word, Meng Jueming had even gone out of his way to enlist Xu Lingchong's help. With his own influence, the Back Mountain Hall's skilled hands would not have given him the time of day, much less run errands for him. But Young Master Xu Lingchong was another matter entirely—that was a face they had to grant; besides, it was a trifling favor, no trouble at all.

A trifle to them, perhaps, but a matter of life and death to Wei Zhao. Had he not concealed his early Foundation Establishment strength, being dropped into a place like this would have meant certain death nine times out of ten.

After that eye-opening show of force, Wei Zhao's movements were noticeably more cautious. Perhaps because a top-tier python like that held sway here, however, no other powerful creatures could be found within several li; and if there were any, they were mostly harmless small beasts like the little killer marmot (see Chapter 2221, "Hogging It All").

Wei Zhao reckoned that even if such small beasts were trussed up and delivered to the python's very jaws, it probably would not bother to open its mouth.

Having reached that conclusion, Wei Zhao allowed himself a measure of reassurance. Moving about beside such a powerful spirit beast was extremely dangerous, but it was not without its advantages—at least it spared him a great many petty troubles.

And the python had just swallowed a mid-Heaven stage black ape whole; by the usual habits of serpents, it should not need to feed again for some time. That was an inborn instinct, and presumably that Foundation Establishment python was no exception. In other words, for at least a while to come, there should be no further danger in this area.

That suited Wei Zhao perfectly, giving him a prime opportunity to search for herbs. And normally, under the looming menace of the python overhead, other spirit beasts and wild creatures should not dare set foot lightly within several li of this territory—which meant the herbs here ought to grow better than anywhere else.

His mind made up, Wei Zhao dropped down from the canopy. Herbs, after all, did not grow on trees, barring a very few exceptions.

Sure enough, the moment Wei Zhao reached the ground, he found something.

It was a pale blue blossom growing amid the grass, utterly unremarkable at first glance. But look closely, and one would discover that the flower was composed entirely of a single petal, its shape curving with a mystery beyond mystery, as though it harbored some profound secret of heaven and earth. Above all, small as the blossom was, it brimmed with spiritual energy—the hallmark of a medicinal herb.

"Could it be a One-Petal Flower?" Wei Zhao pondered briefly. The shape of this little blue blossom was familiar to him; the walls of the Back Mountain Hall were carved with several hundred of the back mountain's more common herbs, and he had skimmed through them before setting out—this very flower had happened to be among them.RS